New urban farm and ag school planned for North Ave. neighborhood

Saturday

A new centerpiece for the local urban agriculture movement will soon emerge from formerly rural acreage in north Athens.

A 5-acre-plus tract of land on Ruth Street, nestled into a residential neighborhood not far from North Avenue, is to become the next urban farm run by the Athens Land Trust.

The new farm will complement and expand on agricultural efforts at the land trust's West Broad Market Garden in the former Rutland School on Broad St., said land trust Director of Operations Heather Benham.

Formerly, she said, the land served as a livestock farm.

A history of agriculture allows the land to slip through modern zoning ordinances. Because of a documented history of uninterrupted agricultural use, the new urban farm will be grandfathered in as legal, but technically non-conforming to current code, according to Craig Page of the Athens-Clarke County Planning Department.

The land includes a house built in the 1930s that Benham said could be used for fundraising farm-to-table dinners. Multiple outbuildings, including two barns, one of which is currently occupied by a turkey vulture, are also on the property.

Other homes in the vicinity are at least 30 years younger than the farmhouse.

The acreage stretches from the front door at 481 Ruth St. back to Northside Drive. The land sits adjacent to the Five Acre Woods, a public forest owned by Athens-Clarke County and held under a conservation easement by the land trust. The lot is 5.6 acres in total.

"I've had my eye on that space forever," Benham said.

The land trust closed on the property in early May, Benham said, purchasing it from the family of Marshall Williams for $250,000 after a year of negotiations. Benham said Williams' family told her they wanted to see the plot remain a farm.

"The sky is the limit as far as ideas for where it could go," Benham said.

Benham said there's "more demand" for produce from the West Broad Market Garden than can be grown in the beds that stripe across the old school's baseball field. She said that the new farm will boost the market garden's Community Supported Agriculture program, which delivers boxes of produce weekly to subscribers who pay the bill at beginning of the season.

Mostly, though, Benham envisions the land as a farm school where interested inexperienced farmers can come learn the ins and outs of organic agriculture. Tuition to such a program would help fund similar educational opportunities for low-income people with a desire to farm.

The Athens Land Trust has planned a groundbreaking on the urban farm on Ruth Street for Aug. 22.